July | 2014 | renxkyoko's space

Archive for July, 2014

30 Jul

Woohoo ! I’m in the Philippines ! !

Posted by renxkyoko in Boracay Island Philippines, Filipino food, Philiipine culture, Philippine Heritage, Philippines, random musings, Random thoughts. Tagged: Being A Filipino, Boracay Island, Filipino food, my life, Philippine culture, Philippine food, postaweek2011, random thoughts. 88 comments

Oh , my gosh ! ! Renxkyoko Iglesias here !

I’m in the Philippines ! We left good ol’ USA on June 21 , 10:30 PM, and arrived in the Philippines 0n June 23 at 4:30 AM. It was a 14 hour flight. It wasn’t a smooth ride, there was too much turbulence from get go, and I was so scared I almost cried. It didn’t help that I actually have plane phobia. I didn’t get to sleep at all. Instead I watched 5 movies. ( Frozen, Transfomers, X-Men, The Hobbit, The Conjuring. ) The only good thing about the flight was the food. Philippine Airlines was quite generous . Dinner was delicious, we had sandwiches and muffins and juice/coffee in between , then breakfast. I’m sorry I can’t post any pictures as yet because I’m using a teeny weeny notebook, and it isn’t mine.

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Today is July 25. I’m back home, yay, California ! ! We left the Philippines on July 21, 10:30 PM and arrived here in California , also on July 21 , 8 P.M.

It’s been a week since then, but I have not done anything here, no reading, no writing. I’ve been busy at work. I’m even afraid to check out my emails. I’m sure I already have thousands of thousands of unread emails.

Oh, well, I have to start writing , anyway, so here I am. Bear with me, please. I think I left my enthusiasm in the Philippines. So, where do I begin?

Do you guys remember this picture? I posted this in Novemeber. That’s how our vacation house in Boracay, Island in the Philippines looked in November last year, 2013.

Here is how it looks now. It’s 99% finished, except for a few paintings here and there…. and the house is empty, no furniture, and just 2 beds.

.It looks like it has 3 floors, but actually, there’s a 4th floor , which is the rooftop. I love the view from the rooftop.

It was such a hectic and busy one month vacation in the Philippines. The bulk of our vacation was spent checking out the huge shopping malls in the city. Do you know 3 of the top 10 biggest malls in the world are in Manila, Philippines? Mall of Asia, North EDSA/Trinoma, and EDSAMegaMall. . They were so huge that just walking around and window shopping at these places overwhelmed and exhausted us. And then there are smaller ones, but still 3x bigger than the shopping mall here in our city in the US.. Even the friendly neighborhood mall at the subdivision where we live in the Philippines is 2x bigger… 4 floors and 2 buildings connected by a bridge. It’s insane. The Philippines is supposed to be a Thirld World country, but shopping malls are full, people are actually shopping and we always have to wait a bit at restaurants to be seated.

Above pic is one 0f a smaller malls. I like the interior architecture of this one.

Our vacation was mostly food tripping, too. The price of food over there is ridiculously low.
For example, the takoyaki is $0.50 and shawarma is $1.50. Takoyaki is Japanese octopus balls.

We arrived at 4 AM at the airport. By 12 noon, we were already at the neighborhood mall , shopping for walking shoes and flipflops. We sure didn’t waste any time.

.That’s yours truly in the photo.

The next day, it was again another shopping spree, this time for real pearls. There’s a mall there ( Greehhills ) with seemingly endless stalls of pearls. It was a sight to behold.